Inspiration
Infrastructural overheads prevent widespread ATMs in developing countries. It is common for someone to travel 20miles to a nearby bank or third-party depositor. Given this, we sought to create a grid-independent ATM (giATM) that allows one to deposit his income and enjoy a full range of mobile banking services.
How is it different from current ATMs?
ATMs of today often require extensive land lines and high speed VPNs, which are not available in some parts of developing countries.
What it does/How it works
Consumer deposits money and inserts identifying token into giATM. The giATM has a simple currency counter similar to those in vending machine. The token provides an Unique User ID (UUID), a token ID and an encryption key. The giATM also generates a timestamp at time of transaction. The giATM uses the encryption key to display a pseudorandom string with all the other information to the customer. The customer will text the pseudorandom bit to the bank via SMS. The bank server upon receiving the pseudorandom bit will use the corresponding decryption key (based on the token ID) to decrypt the message. The bank will issue the respective amount into savings account of consumer.
What's next for giATM - Banking for all
This can be scaled up easily given its low costs. Our goal is to provide a low-cost and robust device for banks to utilise and expand their presence in developing countries. We also recognise the use of grid-independent technology and this could be extended to provide an array of other services.
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